Hey, bro. What’s up, bro? Hey, have you seen my key card...bro? The origins are unclear to me. I can’t pinpoint an exact year in which I began using the word bro, let alone the year it went from an ironic mockery of dude culture to a suffix absolutely crucial to my speech pattern. Regardless of the specifics, ever since I mandated myself to slowly phase the term out of my vocabulary, I have been forced to stand and face just how often I use it. Carrying its own momentum for some time now, the end of a sentence simply sounds empty said without it.
I can see the reader possibly wondering, “But Brendon, even if saying bro all the time is super annoying, it’s not really all that bad. What’s the issue?” Well in fact, along with bro, my mandate also includes the nixing of the words ‘man’ and ‘dude’ when used in the same context, and furthermore the use of ‘guys’ to refer to a group of people. The simple explanation for why I am doing this is that I have decided that by using these decidedly male words as defaults for any human I meet, I am feeding directly into the phenomena of “The Male Gender Bias” which runs so deeply and subconsciously within our country. The assumption of male main characters in media at large, the assumption of males to take leadership positions in most situations, and other such phenomena are rife within our culture. The bias is undeniable, and even though my simple use or non-use of the word bro to define those of all genders won’t likely have a large scale impact on the issue, I would liken it to the idea of being a vegetarian or taking a shorter shower; even though one’s single action may not change an issue, to not perform such an action is to stand by and therefore support the current operation of a situation.
When I posted my mandate as a status on my Facebook a few days ago, I received some feedback which basically asked, “Why do this?” insinuating that even though using ‘guys’ or ‘bro’ to describe decidedly non-male figures was technically off, it was basically harmless. This I’ve found largely to be true. I have personally never met or spoken to a woman or non-binary person who has been openly offended at the use of the word ‘guys’ to describe a group they were in. The problem with this thinking in my eyes, however, is that often times people who fit within a societal norm (so in this case, males) mistake a lack of open objection as the same thing as support. The inability to change unless there is a dire need naturally supports status quo, and blindly supporting status quo is definitely not what I’m about.
There are certainly issues to be raised against my idea. For instance, should I continue to use the words to describe people who are male? I would say no. In the end, the point is really even more serious than trying to rid myself of letting “male-ness” be my default definition of personhood. Only using such colloquialisms to refer to males might in fact be worse; a boys-club attitude amongst those I can assume are male based on socially constructed ideas of male appearance and behavior certainly won’t do anything to change the gender bias. Instead, I think that as we progress forward as a culture and deconstruct the norms with which we have existed for so long, we will move further away from gender as relating to personhood at all. For so long gender in our society has existed simply as a way to put people in boxes, and I would like to do my part in whatever way possible to subvert this system. Once again; my change is small, but small changes can not be disregarded in their effects amongst a whole.
And so, I begin my journey to practice what I preach. I encourage any readers to join me; expand your horizons, destroy your biases.
